They did not understand radiation sickness and fallout well.
In fact, after the war, the US set up clinics with the ulterior motive of studying the survivors. They talk about it in this documentary, that I’d highly recommend:
https://www.pbs.org/articles/hibakusha-stories-of-survivors-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki
They did not understand radiation sickness and fallout well.
oh yes they did. No one in the military cared.
Fermi thought the Trinity blast would ignite the atmosphere, they did it anyway.
Then the USA continued with above ground testing for another decade in the West, knowing prevailing winds would carry fallout across the country. Military refused to move testing to the East Coast where fallout would have been carried over the ocean.
Everyone knew the dangers, but so much money had been invested and they feared Russians developing bigger bombs.
Fermi thought the Trinity blast would ignite the atmosphere, they did it anyway.
This is a myth. He had that idea and worked out the math, and concluded it would be extremely unlikely well before the test. He’s often misquoted as stating something like “I’m not entirely sure until we try it.”
Watch the PBS documentary. The US military had an intense interest in studying the effects on victims, not really knowing what the effects would be. The crime was treating them like experiments and PR control over helping them, but it’s clear they didn’t really know.
…And yeah. The suffering of Nevada’s nearby (minority) population, and indigenous people in the Pacific, is well documented :(
The two dropped bombs were detonated at altitude. This causes much less radiation near the blast than detonating on the ground because the radioactive contamination is dispersed in the atmosphere rather than in the soil and groundwater.
This is why the destroyed cities didn’t have to be abandoned like Pripiat.
After the original tests in New Mexico, that risk was seen as very low
Well, the 300 000 civilians who died because of the bombs weren’t involved, so I’m guessing they didn’t care.
Local fallout is dust and ash from a bomb crater, contaminated with radioactive fission products. It falls to earth downwind of the crater and can produce, with radiation alone, a lethal area much larger than that from blast and fire. With an air burst, the fission products rise into the stratosphere, where they dissipate and become part of the global environment. Because Little Boy was an air burst 580 meters (1,900 ft) above the ground, there was no bomb crater and no local radioactive fallout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
Fat boy was dropped from 500 meters, so I guess there too was no fallout.
I don’t know though if this was known before the drop though.
In short, yes. While I don’t know, the specifics about the fallout from the bombs dropped on Japan, but I do know that the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine created a nuclear fallout cloud that drifted all the way to Germany and affected everyone in between. There was acid rain and elevated radiation levels for months.
And although it did not create a cloud of radioactive waste, the Fukushima disaster in 2011 released an enormous amount of contaminated water into the ocean around the plant that can still be traced.
Edit: the amount of people going out of their way to be combative, rude, and to try to start an argument is quite disappointing. If you don’t like my answer, just downvote and move on.
Pretty sure the fallout from Chernobyl was all the radioactive particles dispersed into the atmosphere by the initial explosion of reactor 4, and the subsequent fires of radioactive and contaminated materials.
Literally a “dirty bomb” dispersing radioactive material, instead of the radioactive material being converted directly to energyThat’s precisely what I said, with slightly different wording. But thanks for the additional detail.
I mean, I guess? Kinda?
You said you didn’t know the specific on the bombs dropped.
Ok, so 0 information on the bomb dropped.But that Chernobyl created a massive cloud of fallout that impacted neighbouring countries and caused acid rain.
Well, that’s true. But that wasn’t a fusion explosion.So, it felt like you were trying to relate 2 unrelated things. Like an apples-to-oranges situation.
I feel that I clarified that the bombs dropped were designed to converted all fusable material to energy. They were literally designed to weaponise fusion.
And that the fallout from Chernobyl wasn’t caused by material turning into energy (ie fusion), but from particle dispersion.So, I guess.
In that you said you had 0 knowledge of Thing A, and stated an unrelated fact about Thing B. Where both things are true, and are related by the fact that nuclear fuel is involved. But that’s as far as the relationships goBut everything you said after “yes” does nothing to support the “yes”
That’s a really long way to admit that I was right, and you just didn’t like my answer anyway.